FIA Change Gravel Car Rules
One week before Rally Ireland, the FIA made a significant change in the world championship rules for 2009. The rule had proposed that gravel note crews ("Safety Crews") should be limited to one crew per team, now it has been changed to one crew per rally crew. This rule only applied to all-asphalt events (two in 2009, Ireland and then Catalunya at the end of the season, with a mixed asphalt-gravel event in Cyprus as well). News of the change was received with relief at Ford. Jari-Matti Latvala: "both of us use Finnish notes, but quite different styles. I use a numbers system, Mikko (Hirvonen) uses descriptive notes". Sebastien Loeb of Citroen said the rule change was most important. "Pacenote systems are very complicated and very precise. This is a safety issue and you cannot play around with matters like this". FIA confirmed the rule change was currently only for Ireland but the situation would be reviewed afterwards, presumably in time for Cyprus Rally

Citroen against Suzuki by Burkart
Former Citroen C2 S1600 driver Aaron Burkart came home from the Galway Rally with a clearer idea how the Suzuki Swift S1600 which he will rally in the 2009 JWRC compares. "The two cars (the main contenders in the 2009 series) are completely different. The Swift was designed from scratch as a car for gravel, the Citroen as a car which excels on dry tarmac, and you can immediately notice the difference". Galway Rally was an ideal chance to prepare for the forthcoming Rally Ireland and provided Aaron with his first chance to rally a Swift. He had been battling for the lead before an electronic problem occurred. "For me there was another difference. Suzuki Sport Europe is a big team and my previous experience was in a small team. When we had our problem on the first day the team worked almost through that night to get the car ready to run on the second day. That was a great feeling for me. I am really looking forward to working with SSE in the championship this year". Aaron's six-rally JWRC programme includes both asphalt rounds in the predominently all-gravel series (Ireland and Spain), despite the presumed disadvantage of asphalt rallying in the Swift. "My background is in asphalt rallying, I am by nature an asphalt driver, so I did not want to miss these events".

Shakedown classification (damp and light rain)
1.  Hirvonen (Ford)             1m 38.0s
2.  Loeb (Citroen)              1m 38.4s
3.  Atkinson (Citroen)          1m 38.6s
4.  Sordo (Citroen)             1m 39.0s
5.  Latvala (Ford)              1m 39.7s
6.  Wilson (Ford)               1m 39.9s
7.  Aava (Ford)                 1m 40.9s
8.  Al Qassimi (Ford)           1m 41.2s
9.  Solberg (Ford)              1m 41.4s
10. Rautenbach (Citroen)        1m 41.7s
11. Ogier (Citroen)             1m 42.4s
12. G. McHale (Subaru)          1m 44.3s
13. Aaron McHale (Fordx)        1m 45.5s
14. T. McNulty (Subaru)         1m 46.2s
15. Austin McHale (Ford)        1m 47.1s
16. E. Boland (Subaru)          1m 48.0s

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